Current Field Guides

Isaac Ro ’00
Partner, Catalio Capital

Isaac Ro is a Partner at Catalio Capital Management, a multi-strategy investment firm focused on breakthrough biomedical technology and innovative healthcare companies. He serves on the boards of Pink Dx, PrognomiQ, and Cage Pharma.

Prior to joining Catalio, he held leadership roles for three breakthrough healthcare companies with a combined exit value approaching $6 billion. He most recently served as Executive Chairman of Haystack Oncology (acquired by Quest Diagnostics), Chief Financial Officer of Sema4 (took public in 2021, Nasdaq: WGS), and Chief Financial Officer of Thrive Earlier Detection (acquired by Exact Sciences).

Previously, Isaac spent 16 years on Wall Street covering the Healthcare sector at Goldman Sachs and Leerink Partners where he was a top ranked equity research analyst and led multiple IPO’s.

Isaac is a 2000 graduate of Middlebury College and majored in History.

Connect with Isaac on Midd2Midd

Schedule a one-on-one chat with Isaac (10:00 AM-12:00 PM on Friday, 11/8/24) - link coming soon.

Connor Williams ’08.5
Historian at Yale University/Great Camp Sagamore/United States Congress/Jessie Ball duPont Fund

A scholar, teacher, and advocate of American and African American history, Connor Williams shares the stories of our past to help shape the societies of our future. His historical work jointly focuses in History and African American Studies, and he researches, writes and teaches on more than two hundred years of racial conflicts, racial politics and racial identities. In all his endeavors, Williams seeks to articulate and inform the connections between the actions of our past and the possibilities of our present, expanding public understandings of complex national and regional histories.

In 2021 and 2022, Williams served as the Lead Historian for the United States Congress’ “Naming Commission,” researching the history, causes and context of Department of Defense assets that commemorate Confederates or the Confederacy. He directed the Commission’s historical initiatives, collaborated with other historians involved and invested in the Commission’s work, and engaged with both the general public and specific stakeholders. He advised the Commission through historical briefings and assisted in the research and presentation of potential new namesakes to the Naming Commissioners. This work culminated with Williams’ direction in writing, revising, and editing to the Naming Commission’s final reports to Congress.

With work striding the traditions of academia and the exigencies of Washington, Williams experienced how memory, history, bureaucracy, politics, publicity and policy all interplayed in this movement to guide the military away from historical treason and racism and towards a future representative of the ideals for which they fight. More broadly, he had the rare chance to spend more than a year reflecting and writing on the roles that the Civil War and the Confederacy have played, could play—and, perhaps, should play—in our historic memories. While the Naming Commission wrapped at the end of 2022, he continues to serve pro bono as the historian-of-record, giving guidance to defense entities on the Commission’s historical conclusions and recommendations.

A book on the Naming Commission and the new namesakes that it chose, co-authored with Ty Seidule and tentatively titled A Promise Delivered: The Naming Commission, Nine Army Bases, and Ten True American Heroes is under contract with St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan. It should be released in 2025. In June 2024, Williams sold his second book, also to St. Martin’s Press. Our Domestic Enemy: The Confederate Insurrection and the Civil War that Saved Our Nation interrogates the causes of the Confederacy, its claims to nationhood, and its consequences for our history. It should be out in 2026.

Williams has also been privileged to serve as a facilitator and consultant for several organizations undergoing similar efforts to reconcile and repair their difficult histories surrounding enslavement, racism, or white supremacy. From educational institutions including Yale University, Washington and Lee University, and Sewanee: The University of the South to government entities like the Department of Defense, to private firms like the Jessie Ball du Pont Fund, Williams has emerged as a leader in researching and consulting on complicated legacies, and advising on what ethical reckonings would really look like. In doing so, he focuses on both the historical nuance that best explains these complex pasts and the moral philosophy that directs ethical efforts at acknowledgement, reconciliation, and repair. Williams’ consulting ranges from one-off meetings with trustees and governing boards to multi-year projects, directing large scale research and reconciliation initiatives. 

Honored by these opportunities for national service, Williams took a leave of absence from Yale University, where he works in the departments of History and African American Studies and is in the final stages of completing A Race on the Frontier: African African-American Lives, Labors and Communities in Northern California, 1850-1915. This culminating doctoral work examines the political struggles, economic opportunities, labor strategies, and networks of organization and support African Americans forged throughout the Golden State between the Gold Rush and the Great War. It seeks to understand why, in a state otherwise beset by racial animosity and white supremacy, by 1900 average black Californians controlled thirty-six times as much wealth and had secured far greater civil rights and social autonomy than their counterparts in the deep south. 

Prior to his Ph.D at Yale, Williams earned a M.A. at Dartmouth College, where he wrote a thesis on diasporic influences upon Frederick Douglass’ political thinking. Among other fellowships, awards, and prizes he was a finalist for the Louis Pelzer Memorial Award, given to the best article written by a Graduate Student. Connor has taught at Yale University, Middlebury College, Southern Connecticut State University and for the Yale College Writing Center. He has also worked for Yale’s Manuscripts and Archives division and at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. 

He continues to write, speak, and research on American and African American histories throughout America’s Long Nineteenth Century.

Schedule a one-on-one chat with Connor (9:00 AM-12:00 PM on Friday, 11/8/24) - link coming soon.

Victoria Yeh ’20
Paralegal at Legal Services NYC

Victoria Yeh is from Taipei, Taiwan, and graduated from Middlebury in 2020 with a double major in History and Political Science. 

Victoria is currently based out of NYC working as a paralegal at Legal Services NYC, and serves as an elected union delegate for UAW Local LSSA 2320. In her current role as a paralegal, she does outreach and connects vulnerable communities with free legal services for a range of civil legal issues such as family/domestic violence, immigration, and housing/tenants’ rights. She also serves as a steering committee member in DEI spaces such as the Asian Pacific Islander Affinity Group, the People of Color Organizing Group, and the LSNYC Language Justice Task Force. 

As a union delegate, Victoria represents union members in disputes such as discrimination complaints, unjust terminations, and salary disputes. She also helps members access benefits such as reimbursements for gender affirming care and educational opportunities. She has supported LSSA2320 through two rounds of contract bargaining, one of which is happening right now! 

Connect with Victoria on Midd2Midd

Schedule a one-on-one chat with Victoria (9:00 AM-12:00 PM on Friday, 11/8/24) - link coming soon.